


Maybe I'm Amazed

by whichstiel



Series: Season 15 Codas [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s15e09 The Trap, F/M, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e09 The Trap, episode coda, spn 15x09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22346401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: Maybe I'm amazed at the way you love me all the timeMaybe I'm afraid of the way I love youMaybe I'm amazed at the way you pulled me out of timeAnd hung me on a lineMaybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you--Maybe I’m Amazed, by Paul McCartney
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Series: Season 15 Codas [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1514042
Comments: 7
Kudos: 119





	Maybe I'm Amazed

_ Maybe I'm amazed at the way you love me all the time _

_ Maybe I'm afraid of the way I love you _

_ Maybe I'm amazed at the way you pulled me out of time _

_ And hung me on a line _

_ Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you _

_ \-- Maybe I’m Amazed, by Paul McCartney _

Eileen drove.

The night washed past as a series of light-smeared blurs - the orange smudges of the night-lit towns sailing through the surrounding fields and the yellow track penning her car to the road. She forced herself to focus, but inevitably, her attention slid away from the road as autopilot took over. 

She’d been so stupid. 

When she’d clawed her way out of Hell, it had been with absolute confidence that she was finally going to free herself and claim her reward in Heaven. Vengeful thoughts had tickled at her - destroy the man who’d ordered her death. She could close her eyes and picture his smug face perfectly. A little ghost possession, maybe a drawer of animated knives? She’d make it last. She’d make it hurt. But instead she had stuck to the little ball of certainty that glowed within her chest. Vengeance was not the way. 

She’d trekked across the countryside, a bare flicker of energy. And all along, her goal glowed within her incorporeal chest like the magnet on a compass:  _ Sam _ . She’d known that Sam and his bunker of treasures could save her or send her on to Heaven or, or  _ something.  _ But now she had to question everything: her certainty, her faith in Sam, her...well,  _ everything _ .

If she thought about Sam too much, she’d turn around now and head back to the bunker buried in the heart of the country. So she thought about where she might find her next case, and how far her next tank of gas would take her. 

* * *

“Maybe I’m amazed at the way you’re with me all the time, maybe I’m afraid of the way I leave you.” Dean rapped his knuckles in time on the Impala’s sturdy undercarriage. He sang along to the radio quietly. The bunker was once again draped in a pall of mourning, this time in the wake of Eileen’s departure. It wouldn’t do to seem too cheerful.

But he was. Couldn’t help it.

Dean grinned at the bolts he was checking and hummed, just between himself and the metal. Cas was back and things were...if not entirely cleared up...much better between them these days. Chuck was still gunning for them all, but he wasn’t just  _ now _ . So for the time being, Dean let himself feel easy. He let himself feel happy. They were a team again. Maybe they didn’t have a plan yet, but they’d come up with something. Usually in the nick of time, and completely half assed...but they’d come up with someone that stuck. There was nothing they couldn’t do together.

“Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you...”

  
  


* * *

Eileen found a case halfway across Colorado, in the dry rain-shadow of the mountains. In the little town of Meeker, graves were collapsing inwards. The news blamed it on sinkholes in the riverside cemetery, but to a seasoned hunter, it was as obvious as raising a flag and shouting  _ ghoul!  _

She spent the day in town, gathering intelligence the way only a hunter would: by patronizing the local haunts and talking to too many people. She used her geologist cover, a rare but fun alias that let her gather all her roadside geology knowledge and haul it out for display. Most people couldn’t tell the difference between a lingo-filled amateur and an expert. By evening, when she stalked the cemetery armed to the teeth under her jacket, nobody suspected a thing. Certainly not the ghoul she caught skulking behind a gravestone. 

A knock-down fight later, Eileen had the ghoul pinned under one hand and her gun jabbed into his temple. She spat blood from her mouth. “Are there more of you?” In the half-moonlight, she watched the ghoul stutter out a denial. 

“I’m alone,” the ghoul told her. His eyes were wide with fright, with rage, with despair. Maybe it was the last emotion that caught at her. 

“Did you kill anyone?” she found herself asking. There was nothing reported in the press or by the police, nor any rumors in town. But she still had to ask. The ghoul shook his head.

“I only eat the dead. I’m a ghoul, not a--” 

He broke off with a ballooning gasp as Eileen withdrew her gun slowly, cautiously. She’d been playing by a hunter’s rules for so long, she’d never questioned them. Now, she questioned everything. Even hunting. “You didn’t kill anyone,” she said slowly, then brandished her gun in front of his nose. “Make sure it stays that way.”

She left the cemetery, unsure of what she had accomplished except that now she felt even more uncertain about her trajectory in the world. She also, she was loathe to admit, felt a little bit better. Mercy could be like that. 

  
  


* * *

“Movie night?” Dean leaned against the kitchen entryway and raised his eyebrows at Sam and Cas. Sam had his head down, cleaning the coffee maker with the same precision he used to clean his guns. Hands wrapped around a mug of muddied coffee, Cas glanced at Sam before slowly shaking his head at Dean.

“Nah. ‘M good. Trying to get this fixed before--” A piece of plastic chipped off the base and flipped across the room, pinging off the cement-block wall.

“Yeah.” Dean grimaced at Cas. “I can see you’re busy? I can wait until--”

“You and Cas go ahead. I’ll join you next time, okay?”

“Come on, Sam.”

Sam blew hair away from his eyes impatiently. “I’ll just...join you later, okay?” He glanced pointedly at Cas. “Why don’t you two get started?” 

Cas exhaled slowly, his eyes flickering between Sam and Dean. Finally, he nodded and pushed away from the table. He carried his mug to the sink and dropped it into the washbasin. As he followed Dean out, he asked quietly, “What are we watching?”

“Ghostbusters. You haven’t seen the new one yet, have you?” Dean winced as he said it. He’d been skating around the time they’d spent at odds. Every time he thought of it, it felt like further apologies should be made. Like he could spend a lifetime building a wall of apology brick-by-brick and it would never be enough. 

“I… No. We never got around to it.” 

Dean slapped his shoulder with more joviality than it required. “Well, you’re in for a treat.”

  
  


* * *

> **Eileen: I** let a ghoul go today
> 
> **Sam:** Eileen? Are you okay? Where are you?   
>    
> 

Eileen smiled at her phone. Of course Sam would immediately ask the one question she’d vowed to never answer. Sure, if she kept her distance she could try to figure out how she felt about Sam. But more importantly, if she kept her distance then she couldn’t be used again to hurt people she...cared about. 

> **Eileen:** I’m fine
> 
> **Eileen:** How are you? 
> 
> **Sam:** Good. Quiet for now
> 
> **Sam:** A ghoul huh?
> 
> **Eileen:** It wasn’t hurting anybody. Not really. I guess being dead gives you another perspective?
> 
> **Sam:** Definitely

Digging her heels onto the thin mattress, Eileen frowned at her phone. 

> **Eileen:** Do you think this is part of it? Chuck's narrative?
> 
> **Sam:** What?
> 
> **Eileen:** Monsters bad. People good

There was a long pause during which Eileen imagined all sorts of derisive or pat responses. 

> **Sam:** Wish I knew. There’s a lot of nuance in hunting. You know that as much as me. But now more than ever I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. If we...
> 
> **Sam:** If all of us are doing the right thing
> 
> **Eileen:** Yeah
> 
> **Sam:** I miss you

Her breath caught and she almost turned the phone to the bedspread but instead she slowly typed.

> **Eileen:** Miss you too

* * *

Dean woke up with his cheek pillowed against Cas’s shoulder. The TV was on a cooking show. On screen an apple-cheeked man waxed poetic about the perfect scone. Dean froze, and blinked, and wondered if he could get away with pretending to be asleep for just a few more minutes. The couch the other hunters had dragged into the bunker was ridiculously comfortable, in his defense. And Cas was… Well. Cas was  _ Cas _ .

“You should go back to sleep.” Amusement colored Cas’s voice, and that was enough to make Dean groan and sit up. His side instantly felt cooler and, if he was being honest, a little bereft at the loss of Cas’s warmth. 

“Nah. I’m awake.” Dean yawned, hugely. He squinted at the TV, as though that was the most important matter to address. “What’re you watching?”

“So you want to be a baker. It’s surprisingly harrowing for a show about cooking.”

Dean laughed. “Yeah, well. That’s reality TV. Everyone wants to see the drama and if there ain’t much, you fake it.”

“You can’t fake baking, though.”

“Oh you’d be surprised. The things you can hide with fondant,” Dean said with cartoonish gravity, then elbowed Cas softly. “Or so I’ve heard.” He left his elbow there, sliding against the trenchcoat between them. 

Cas shifted and Dean jolted, instantly putting several inches between them. He’d crossed a line, gotten too close… “Sorry I, you know.”

“Fell asleep?” Cas’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “You needed it. You’ve been worried about Sam.”

Dean shrugged. Was water wet? “You too.” 

“Me too,” Cas agreed easily. He sighed. “But then,” he said with a trace of gentle humor, “who would I be if I weren’t worried about the Winchesters?” His lips quirked upward as Dean rolled his eyes. 

On screen, a panel of three sour-faced judges nibbled at the scones. “When it’s right, it’s right,” one of them said, cattily. 

Dean settled against the cushions and slung one elbow up on the back of the couch, fingers dangling close to Cas. “And now I’m hungry. And awake.” 

“We could see if Sam fixed the coffee maker?”

Now that was a plan. They headed into the kitchen, Dean stretching and yawning as they went. 

Sam had indeed fixed the coffee maker, and soon after they both settled at the intimate kitchen table with steaming mugs of black coffee and a box of sweet cereal open between them. It was four in the morning and the bunker was quiet. Dean hoped Sam was sleeping and not lying awake in a morose miasma. Money was probably on the latter, though. 

Dean shoveled down a handful of cereal, chased it with a gulp of too-hot coffee, then slumped in relief over the table. 

“Good?” Cas’s gaze was warm as he fished out a small handful of cereal for himself and picked at it, piece by careful piece.

“Yup,” Dean popped the word, then scratched at his chin absently. They sipped their coffee quietly for a little while. When Dean broke the silence, it was with the question he’d nursed for days. “So, what did you do?”

Cas raised an eyebrow. “Do?”

“You know. When you, uh, left.” 

“Ah.” Cas dropped his gaze to his mug and traced a thoughtful line around the lip of the mug, chasing a stray drop of coffee around the rim. “I went fishing.”

The laugh burst out of him thoughtlessly and Dean held up a hand in apology. “Sorry. You were...fishing? I thought you had a hunt?”

Cas twisted his mouth into a wry smile. “The hunt was incidental. I was trying to…” His shoulders slid down.

Dean knew that an unattended sorrow had weighed on Cas, willfully ignored by himself and pushed away by the crisis they’d faced following Chuck’s unlatching of Hell. “I get that. Fishing’s quiet. Meditative.”

Cas made a noise deep in his throat that sounded a lot like heavy disagreement, and Dean’s smile tentatively returned. Shrugging, Cas looked almost sheepish. “I tried to make it so but...it wasn’t as relaxing as you’ve portrayed it to be. Fish are cannier than I imagined. I think they started to anticipate me.”

Dean laced his fingers together and leaned forward as though imparting an extremely serious piece of advice. “That’s your first mistake. You ain’t supposed to be trying to catch anything, for starters.”

Cas narrows his eyes. “Isn’t that the whole point?”

“The point,” Dean stressed, “is to sit around and not think and the whole time you’ve got everyone fooled. Because you’re fishing. It’s useful. Nobody’s gotta know that you’re just sitting around thinking about movies or books.” He grinned slowly. “Or porn.”

“So you really— All those times—?”

Dean rested his chin on his palm and smirked. “There’s a pond,” he said smugly, “that doesn’t have a single living thing in it except pond scum. Swear to anything. Best fishing trip I ever went on.”

Cas shook his head and his eyes shone with amusement. “Can you believe I caught at least a few fish every day?”

“Appallingly productive. Do better next time.”

Cas nodded and as he did so, he extended his legs under the table, letting his shins rest under Dean’s calves. “I will,” he promised.

* * *

Eileen suspected that Sam was plotting her progress across the country. She did her best to keep him in the dark, but she found it difficult to lie when he asked her, point-blank, what she was dealing with in the cases she took on. There were only so many attacks, so many hauntings that made the news brightly enough to be caught by a bored hunter. Someone experienced like Sam could easily pick through the news stories and message boards to pinpoint her latest case. She should cut off communication.

But, no.

She texted Sam because she couldn’t bear not to, and ignored almost everyone else. They could be Chuck pretending to be her friends (she still hadn’t heard from Sue - the real one), or they could be endangered just by contacting her. The level of paranoia she’d developed was exhausting to maintain, but the consequences too dire to drop. 

Eileen finished picking off the clay-heavy mud from her shovel and tossed the tool into her trunk, slamming it closed. She stretched, hands planted in the small of her back, and felt her back crack as she arched her neck toward the treeline. She blinked at the distant mountains, blue-gray and pristine this far into the valley.

The morning felt still and muted, but the fresh smell of early spring stirred a restlessness in her that hunting couldn’t feed. Eileen let herself collapse forward again, pinpricks of easing tension running down her forearms and gathering in her fingertips. She twisted her mouth to one side in contemplation.

Right. She’d drive half a state away and then crash. Hopefully somewhere right around then, she’d find another case. 

Keep hunting. Keep going. Don’t stop, because stopping gave her too much damn time to think. 

* * *

Vampires should be a walk in the park by now, but Dean still limped away from their latest hunt with his joints aching and a trail of blood running heavy down his arm. 

Cas frowned at his bloody sleeve, running a finger over Dean’s arm. “You’re bleeding.”

“Very observant,” Dean grunted. 

“I’ll heal you,” Cas said, his hand already held parallel to Dean’s arm like he expected Dean to fall over in a grateful swoon. 

Dean flinched back. “Dude, no.”

Cas scowled. “You’re  _ hurt.” _

“And you practically passed out last week healing a papercut!”

“Sam had a four inch knife wound. Deep. You think I--” Cas broke off and removed his hand from the vicinity of Dean’s arm, choosing instead to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Healing your injury will take very little grace.” 

“Don’t care,” Dean said and smirked as he let his tone grow a taunting little sing-song quality. “You keep your mojo in the rainy day fund. You hear me?” He took in Cas’s pinched expression and softened at the worry and frustration he saw there. “I know you wanna help,” he said more gently. “And you can. You ever stitched anyone up?”

Cas made a disbelieving sound, as though Dean had just slapped him with an insult. “Of course I have. Well. Me, anyway. I expect it will be easier than sewing up myself?”

“So much easier,” Dean lied. He settled himself against the car and drew up his shirt, wincing as the fabric chewed at his ravaged skin. Blood welled sluggishly from the wound. 

He talked Cas through the process the same way he’d taught Sam all those many years ago. Sterilize and drink and sew.  _ That’s the way to go, _ his brain supplied, ridiculously. 

Cas’s touch was gentle and slow and Dean felt utterly lost to it. He’d endured enough pain in life that something so minor as stitches factored in as little more than an annoyance. That made it easier (and therefore harder) to focus on Cas. His fingers moving with precision, mouth set in that gentle but firm line, breathing low and steady…

Dean waited until the stitches were in and the liquor poured over the wound (and the lips) and then he reached for Cas’s tie. He drew him in line a fish on a line and Cas came, unresisting, to meet Dean’s lips with his own. 

_ It’s funny, _ Dean thought as he parted his mouth to invite Cas in - deeper, warmer, needier.  _ Everything can change in just a second of time. _ So why did this particular moment feel so damn familiar? “This okay?” he remembered to ask, moments or minutes too late. 

Cas’s reply was a rumble against his lips at first and then a slight drawing back, and then another careful application of warmth (and a little tongue). “More than,” came his breathless reply. “You?”

“Good,” Dean pulled Cas tight into his uninjured side and began to calculate options. Venue. Opportunity. Supplies… He laughed, riding high on the feeling of his own heart beating overtime and Cas’s hand sliding down to his ass like it had an appointment. “Amazing, actually.” 

Cas’s only response was incoherent, and perfectly formed. 

Perfectly...perfect.

* * *

> **Eileen:** You’ll tell me when you go up against him?
> 
> **Sam:** Who? Chuck?
> 
> **Eileen** : Who else
> 
> **Sam:** Dean HAS been leaving his dishes all over the library again
> 
> **Sam:** It might be his time
> 
> **Sam:** They’re all over the place
> 
> **Sam:** Also THEY'RE all over the place. I think this is the happiest I've ever seen either of them

Eileen blushed. At her phone. Briefly, she imagined herself and Sam as that couple, annoyingly together and flush with the rush of the start of a relationship. She hastily looped the conversation away from relationships of any kind. 

> **Eileen:** I want to be part of that fight. Your god cage match
> 
> **Sam:** You deserve to be there. Any time you want to
> 
> **Sam:** …..
> 
> **Sam:** We’ll let you know, okay?
> 
> **Sam:** When there's something

Intellectually, Eileen knew that should be enough. She could join the fight when it counted. Maybe kick Chuck in the balls. If God  _ had  _ balls. 

She should put her phone down and go to sleep. In the morning, she should wake up and drive to San Diego where something undead was turning the city’s transient population into something more night-stalkerish than was good for anyone. 

> **Eileen:** If the world ends…
> 
> **Sam:** I want you there. Well, I don't. But you know
> 
> **Sam:** And I’d want you here before it ends. If-- If it ends
> 
> **Eileen:** Sam
> 
> **Sam:** I get what you’re doing. I completely accept it. But I can still wish for more. I don't want to pretend I don't
> 
> **Eileen** : I know

“Thank you,” she finally wrote, and it felt like a hollow, useless phrase. Eileen dropped the phone onto the passenger seat and exhaled her frustration into the steering wheel nexus. 

_ The world is going to end. _ Eileen tried out the thought for size.  _ I could hurt people if I meet up with the Winchesters.  _ She knew she was hurting people by staying away. Sam, though he never showed it, but more importantly...herself. Isolating herself made everything worse. It grayed out the world, turned it to mush before her eyes. 

She picked up her phone deliberately, focusing on the way the smooth plastic and glass felt in her fingers. _Real enough,_ she thought. Real enough to take a chance. She sent Sam a message. 

> **Eileen:** Tell me where you are. I'll be there. I'm on my way.

It was time to stop running. Time to see if there was something there. If she was lucky, or she worked at it, or maybe just believed enough in it...maybe there was _everything_ there. When Sam texted her back (Arkansas, Bluff City) Eileen followed the highway line like a treasure-map trail and wondered what she'd find on the other end. _When it's right, it's right. Right?_ Eileen grimaced. Her hands flexed on the wheel and her heart felt like it might fly right out of her throat. 

_Right. Keep going. Don't stop._ Terrified and exultant, she closed the distance. 

**Author's Note:**

> Phew! Sorry for the long silence! I've been busy and tired. But here's to codas, eh?
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/whichstiel) and [Tumblr](http://whichstiel.tumblr.com/) @ whichstiel. You may also like the Supernatural recap and gif blog I co-write/curate, [Shirtless Sammy](https://shirtlesssammy.tumblr.com/).


End file.
